What's New -  December 2010

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December 3, 2010: Mathslib, a math utilities unit in our DFFLibV13 zip library of common routines and classes was updated tonight and DFFLibV13 was reloaded to reflect a minor bug fix.    Function GetEulerPhi in MathsLib  was changed to return correct value of 1 rather than 0 for N=1 or N=2. 

December 5, 2010:  Another bug detected by my 6 year-old "beta tester" was posted today .  Cows and Bulls is a number based predecessor to the Mastermind game.  Cows and Bulls Version 3 corrects DPI scaling problems for high resolution screen displays, and also now gives an error message rather than looping forever when a blank guess is entered!  

December 8, 2010:  Arctic cold here in a Virginia this week has meant more time programming about forestry rather than practicing it.  I ran across the description of a Biltmore Stick on Wikipedia and decided to understand the mathematics behind it "just for fun".    The stick is a tool for rapidly estimating tree diameters when timber is being "cruised" to estimate its value.  Biltmore Mathematics  in our Math Section investigates how and why the distances marking tree diameters on the stick are determined.  It's a high school trigonometry level problem which I luckily was still able to handle.  

To test the math, the program will also display an English or Metric customized table of marking distances based on your arm length and the maximum diameter to be measured.
 

December 16, 2010:  No new programs this week; I'm working on a small commercial project for a while, then taking a break for the holiday season.

See you all next year.